Thermal Expansion Status

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immibis

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Are those deliberate design decisions, or just artifacts of how the code was written? I suspect that it is the latter, therefore it doesn't really matter if it changes.
A better question is: does anyone rely on it?
Were you around for minecart boosters?
 

PhilHibbs

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A better question is: does anyone rely on it?
Were you around for minecart boosters?
Anyone who relies on side-effects and glitches and such like just has to put up with changes when those accidental features disappear. No software developer can be expected to maintain bug-for-bug compatibility for ever. Especially if you're replacing your IC2 cables with Universal Forge Power String or whatever, expecting them to behave identically is as unreasonable as expecting Redstone Energy Conduits to behave identically to BC conductive pipes.
 

Loufmier

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Anyone who relies on side-effects and glitches and such like just has to put up with changes when those accidental features disappear. No software developer can be expected to maintain bug-for-bug compatibility for ever.
For some reason name Microsoft pops out, but i can`t remember exactly why...
 

Skyqula

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Holy crap, I just installed 1.6.4 to test some of the new mods and I'm using the standard BC water pipes instead of the Liquiducts.. do you know how horrible this is? I can't describe how shit these things are, I didn't remember them beings this terrible but my god this is horrifing. A simple Steel Tank -> Fuel Drum transfer takes about 40-50x longer then a Liquiduct would take, theres only 8 pipes in this chain 1 wooden, 7 golden and I can see the liquid just randomly going were ever it pleases despite the one possible place it can go at the speed of molasses... this is just... I can't do it, without Thermal Expansion 1.6.4 is unplayable.

I would suggest reading the pipe tooltips! :)

If you did you would notice that all pipes are 10mb/t except gold and emerald wich are 40mb/t. You would also notice that emerald is now an extraction pipe aswell!
 

RedBoss

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Holy crap, I just installed 1.6.4 to test some of the new mods and I'm using the standard BC water pipes instead of the Liquiducts.. do you know how horrible this is? I can't describe how shit these things are, I didn't remember them beings this terrible but my god this is horrifing. A simple Steel Tank -> Fuel Drum transfer takes about 40-50x longer then a Liquiduct would take, theres only 8 pipes in this chain 1 wooden, 7 golden and I can see the liquid just randomly going were ever it pleases despite the one possible place it can go at the speed of molasses... this is just... I can't do it, without Thermal Expansion 1.6.4 is unplayable.
There's pipes similar to liquiducts offered by Ender IO that are used by a majority of people in 1.6. Also the liquid pipes from extra utilities.
 

DaeDroug

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Holy crap, I just installed 1.6.4 to test some of the new mods and I'm using the standard BC water pipes instead of the Liquiducts.. do you know how horrible this is? I can't describe how shit these things are, I didn't remember them beings this terrible but my god this is horrifing. A simple Steel Tank -> Fuel Drum transfer takes about 40-50x longer then a Liquiduct would take, theres only 8 pipes in this chain 1 wooden, 7 golden and I can see the liquid just randomly going were ever it pleases despite the one possible place it can go at the speed of molasses... this is just... I can't do it, without Thermal Expansion 1.6.4 is unplayable.
Ender IO water conduits ftw.
 

RavynousHunter

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I'll second the recommendation of using the Mekanism mechanical pipes for fluid transport. They work reasonably well, and can be made as soon as you can make steel, which with Mekanism, isn't all that far into the game. Just make yourself a configurator, charge it, and you can have it extract from anything without even requiring a redstone signal. In my opinion, they're easier to use than the Ender IO ducts because one, they're easier to craft, and two, they're easier to place. Ender IO ducts require fused quarts, which you make in its special alloy furnace outta 4 nether quartz, a process which is rather slow...dunno if there's a way to make it go any faster, either. Also, Ender IO ducts are TINY in-game. I mean, really fucking tiny, with correspondingly tiny hitboxes, making placement a bit of a pain in the arse.
 

Sarda

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I would suggest reading the pipe tooltips! :)

If you did you would notice that all pipes are 10mb/t except gold and emerald wich are 40mb/t. You would also notice that emerald is now an extraction pipe aswell!

40mb/t is still horrible compared to Liquiduct's Speed of 100mb/t, it doesn't actually move at 40mb/t anyway it just enters the pipe system at 40mb/t and rolls around it in random directions at the speed of molasses til it exits to random machine, a Liquiduct instantly transfers its contents at 100mb/t spread to all the machines equally that its connected to which is a why its a requirement for me.

There's pipes similar to liquiducts offered by Ender IO that are used by a majority of people in 1.6. Also the liquid pipes from extra utilities.

Ender IO water conduits ftw.

Eh... Ender Conduits are ok but not a suitable replacement as they don't work the same way. They transfer at a decent speed but they fill sequentially like normal pipes do instead of the way a Liquiduct works by filling the entirety of the network at the same time, this means what ever machine/tank is closest to the source gets more liquid then the machine furthest from the source (if it gets any at all) so these are no good.
 

Yusunoha

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I'll second the recommendation of using the Mekanism mechanical pipes for fluid transport. They work reasonably well, and can be made as soon as you can make steel, which with Mekanism, isn't all that far into the game. Just make yourself a configurator, charge it, and you can have it extract from anything without even requiring a redstone signal. In my opinion, they're easier to use than the Ender IO ducts because one, they're easier to craft, and two, they're easier to place. Ender IO ducts require fused quarts, which you make in its special alloy furnace outta 4 nether quartz, a process which is rather slow...dunno if there's a way to make it go any faster, either. Also, Ender IO ducts are TINY in-game. I mean, really fucking tiny, with correspondingly tiny hitboxes, making placement a bit of a pain in the arse.

all the UE mods would be really used alot, if only there was enough of documentation of the mods. I really like the UE mods, I really do, but the lack of documentation... ugh

also, I wish BC changed it so the speed of which the wooden/emerald pipes pumps depends on which kind of authartic gate you use, with a normal authartic basic gate being the slowest, and a authartic diamond gate being wicked fast
 

Omicron

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Holy crap, I just installed 1.6.4 to test some of the new mods and I'm using the standard BC water pipes instead of the Liquiducts.. do you know how horrible this is? I can't describe how shit these things are, I didn't remember them beings this terrible but my god this is horrifing. A simple Steel Tank -> Fuel Drum transfer takes about 40-50x longer then a Liquiduct would take, theres only 8 pipes in this chain 1 wooden, 7 golden and I can see the liquid just randomly going were ever it pleases despite the one possible place it can go at the speed of molasses... this is just... I can't do it, without Thermal Expansion 1.6.4 is unplayable.

That's because you're doing it wrong. "It" being both gameplay and math in this case.

For starters, a liquiduct can only be at most 16x faster than a wooden fluid pipe - and that's if forced extraction mode actually is 160 mB/t, some people have told me it was less than that. So your "40x - 50x" is completely bogus.

Also, don't use wooden fluid pipes if you want maximum throughput. Use emerald ones. They do four times as much.

Finally, if you have a steel tank, why are you using a wooden pipe at all? Tanks now auto-output from valves in the bottom. Just hook your golden pipes up to the valve directly.


TL;DR: knowing how stuff works - as important in Minecraft as in RL ;)
 

Alcheya

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Yes, and that's actually an official stance. When BC adds storage, it'll be in the form of leaky capacitors (which do have their uses). The REC flipped the script somewhat.
Leaky capacitors? No thanks...


Energy stored should stay stored and not drain.. Machines shouldn't use energy when not actively doing something. It's a nuissance. I like to leave my minecraft running while I afk and let quarries run, items craft up, things grow, farms gather materials, etc.. that is one of the main reasons we use chunk loaders, so we don't have to be there while they work. Isn't that kind of the point of having automation? So we don't have to baby-sit everything while we do other things? I hate having to break my rolling machine or the redstone conduit underneath it so it's not constantly draining my energy while I am away.

Imagine being on a server where someone is not too far from your base.. You log off, leaving your machines connected, only to come back to all your resources completely drained while nothing was happening... Sure, you can add gates to stop stuff from running.. but why so many extra steps? If there is nothing in my machine, I shouldn't have to add 10 blocks to tell it to turn off when it's not doing anything. It's a minor nuissance with magmatic engines, but it's okay since it's one of the few things that work like this. This will be the same for ANYONE using the machine. No one is going to want, lets say, their quarry running while there is nothing to mine. No one is going to want their furnace draining their power while there is nothing to be smelted... My oven stays plugged into the wall 24/7, I don't have to unplug it while I'm not using it, I just turn it off. Adding a lever to every machine that wants to use power would be silly and go against the whole "automated" part of FTB/modded minecraft.

I'll be happy to wait for TE to do it's own thing with energy if it means I don't have worry about "draining power" consuming all my energy resources (lava, coal, biofuel, whatever) while nothing is happening because I choose to leave my game running so my trees/wheat/whatever will grow while I feed my kid a bottle and put him to bed for a half hour.

Forgive me if I misunderstood, but I'm pretty sure that's what was stated.. that BC believes machines should "drain" when not in use and still continue to draw power... essentially adding the need to have structure pipes and gates all over every machine so that things turn off when not in use, like magmatic engines currently work, in order to have a truly "automated" setup.
 
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RavynousHunter

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If I remember correctly, the gates can be directly attached to your wooden power pipes and turn engines on with the "power requested" conditional...dunno if that's a condition that's on all or just at/above a certain grade of gate. However, I do agree that its completely idiotic to have machines that constantly drain power when doing fuck all except twiddling its non-existent thumbs. I'm not exactly a fan of "leaky" systems unless there's a reason behind them other than "game balance." Things like induction furnaces make sense to have a constant energy requirement, since they stay constantly heated. Even then, the power draw stops when the heat drops to zero, it doesn't just keep going on taking your EU like a thief in the night. If a quarry, for example, isn't building its frame or actually working, there's absolutely no reason for it to be a power sink, outside supposed balance.

Pretty much the only reason I use MJ anymore is because between it and EU, its the more stable of the two. I'm just glad Ender IO has capacitor banks which are pretty much the exact same as old RECs, and can be placed on to one another to extend their energy storage abilities.

As for Mekanism mechanical fluid pipes, I forgot one critical point: they only transport liquids to attached inventories that need them. So, if your combustion engines don't need any fuel, the pipes won't be taking any fuel out of your tank. A nice, intelligent system, as it should be.
 

PhilHibbs

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If I remember correctly, the gates can be directly attached to your wooden power pipes and turn engines on with the "power requested" conditional...
The problem is that some people want to turn their machines off completely, effectively disconnect them from the grid, when there's no work to be done so that the engines don't turn on just to keep up with a constant drain. Not sure how you'd do that with gates, though, unless the machine will switch on/off with redstone like the rolling machine does. I don't think most of them do. Maybe that will be added along with constant power draw. Do gates have a "stop power from flowing through this piece of pipe" ability? That would work, but would be pointless on a structure pipe if you're using some other kind of power transfer.
 
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RedBoss

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The problem is that some people want to turn their machines off completely, effectively disconnect them from the grid, when there's no work to be done so that the engines don't turn on just to keep up with a constant drain. Not sure how you'd do that with gates, though, unless the machine will switch on/off with redstone like the rolling machine does. I don't think most of them do. Maybe that will be added along with constant power draw. Do gates have a "stop power from flowing through this piece of pipe" ability? That would work, but would be pointless on a structure pipe if you're using some other kind of power transfer.
This is my line of thinking as well. From what I've grasped most BC based machines now have constant energy draw at idle. I don't see how gates are really useful. You still have energy waste so you may as well just make a boiler ASAP. You're always going to have something wasting energy so your best solution is to use an energy gen that runs perpetually. Kinda makes it very boring.
 

Sarda

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For starters, a liquiduct can only be at most 16x faster than a wooden fluid pipe - and that's if forced extraction mode actually is 160 mB/t, some people have told me it was less than that. So your "40x - 50x" is completely bogus.

Your assuming the liquid doesn't just bounce back and forth in the pipes doing absolutely nothing unless random chance leads it to it to a destination with room to accept it. If they functioned like a Liquiduct and were just 10mb/t, then yes my math would be really bad, however they don't. It might not be 40-50x, but my stopwatch is showing well past 16x.

Also, don't use wooden fluid pipes if you want maximum throughput. Use emerald ones. They do four times as much.

Great instead of being insanely inefficient there just horribly inefficient, super.

Finally, if you have a steel tank, why are you using a wooden pipe at all? Tanks now auto-output from valves in the bottom. Just hook your golden pipes up to the valve directly.

Do you put all your tanks on top of your buildings or something? Because the bottoms of my tanks usually aren't very accessible.

TL;DR: knowing how stuff works - as important in Minecraft as in RL ;)

For a condescending know-it-all you gave me absolutely nothing practical to work with, "use those other inferior bc pipes", super.
 
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